Don't Kill Me, I'm Only The Bartender
by ardavenport
Summary: Quark is up to no good and Major Kira gets caught up in it. And she isn't happy when she recovers from it.
1. Chapter 1

**DON'T KILL ME, I'M ONLY THE BARTENDER**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 1**

Quark arranged the glasses on the tray carefully. He certainly couldn't trust his brother Rom with this job. He poured two Spican fire waters with lots of ice into two tall glasses. From under the bar, from a hidden compartment he took out a small metal box. After glancing around to make sure that the crowd around the bar was too busy with its own business to notice what he was up to, he added a small portion of the white powder in the metal box to one of the drinks. After safely concealing the box again, he plunked a feathery green garnish into the untainted drink. He inserted a yellow sparkling flower to the other one.

"Brother!" Rom, with his pitiful drooping earlobes, shambled over, an angry Cresarian behind him. Quark sighed and went to smooth over whatever Rom had screwed up. After he had dispatched the Cresarian with a free drink (that he intended to deduct from his brother's share of the day's take) he returned to his tray.

Quark froze.

Major Kira Nerys was half way through a glass of Spican fire water. On the tray, there sat one untouched drink decorated with a green garnish.

Major Kira set the glass next to the discarded yellow garnish, sighed and sat down at the bar.

"I needed that," she declared. "You wouldn't believe what's been going on at Ops, today."

"Um, ah, I'm sure I would," Quark stammered, furiously trying to think of what kind of effect czistirine would have on a Bajoran. The drink had been intended to knock out a Tellurian ship captain for at least nine hours.

"We had four ships from Bajor today. Four. But that idiot at Central Command kept insisting that there were supposed to be five. I had to waste two hours convincing her and her supervisor that we didn't lose a whole shuttle. How's your day been?" she added as an afterthought, taking another swig of her drink.

"Uh, interesting." He grabbed the glass out of her hand.

"Hey!"

"What am I thinking?" he told her. "That's not your usual drink." He whisked away the evidence and produced a fresh glass and a bottle of synthale. "Have some of this. On the house," he added with his best cover-up smile.

"Uh, thanks." Kira accepted the drink with surprise and then suspicion. "You feeling all right?"

"Ah, couldn't be better." Quark backed away. As soon as his back was to her, his charming, jagged-toothed smile melted into a near-panicked grimace. What could he do? Call the Infirmary and casually suggest to Doctor Bashir that he come to the bar and give Kira a physical? Would Kira kill him before or after Bashir treated her for the czistirine? All of his options looked extremely expensive.

Three new people at the bar demanded service and he splashed drinks in their mugs without thinking about what they'd asked for. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Kira, but she didn't seem to be showing any symptoms as she poured the synthale into her glass. Maybe czistirine didn't affect Bajorans at all.

Rom came to him with another problem and Quark snapped at him angrily. This disaster was all his fault for distracting him and letting Kira get to the drink in the first place.

Quark turned back to the bar. Kira was sitting still, staring vacantly in front of her. Uh oh. The Ferengi came around from behind the bar and cautiously approached. Thankfully, no one was sitting next to the major. The glass in front of her was half full of synthale. The bottle was lying in a pool of the rest of it on the bar.

Well, she was still breathing fine, and her color didn't look too far off from her usual pasty tan. Tellurians weren't that different from Bajorans-except for the color of their blood and the number of arms they had. If the effects were similar, he could just hustle Kira upstairs and let her sleep it off.

"Ah, so, Major, aside from the problems at Ops, how's your day been?" Kira didn't answer; she didn't move; she just stayed hunched over her glass at the bar, the cuffs of her otherwise spotless uniform lying in the pool of ale. Bad sign.

"Ah, Major," Quark tapped her on the arm. She didn't react. "You don't look so good, maybe you should lie down for a bit." Quark took her arm just above the elbow and guided her off the bar stool. She came easily.

Kira stood staring blankly at him, her arms limp at her sides and the beauty of the situation suddenly hit the Quark right on his lobes. Her rounded, feminine features, her darkened lips, her accented eyes were relaxed and neutral, a far cry from the usual expression of threatening revulsion she gave him. Quark passed a hand before her eyes with no response. He reached up and touched the delicate ridges between the Bajoran's eyes with the same non-result.

"Hmm, I never thought I'd see you like this, Major." Quark touched the silver chain of Kira's single Bajoran earring hanging from her right ear. He admired the curves of her body in her tight fitting orange uniform, her shapely hips, buttocks and legs, her narrow waist and full bosom. He laid a hand on her breast.

Kira's hand shot up and jerked his hand away. Quark hissed. She started to sway.

"I knew it had to be too good to be true."

Jadzia Dax sat at a table by herself, people-watching and nursing the same drink she'd had for the past half hour. She didn't care much for dabo or most of the other gambling in the bar, but the people who did were fascinating.

Dax saw Kira come in, immediately pluck a drink from the bar and down it. It had been a hard day at Ops that had tried even Dax's Trill patience. The provisional government on Bajor was less than two years old, but they already had a good start on their bureaucracy.

Quark came around to Kira, who stood. He seemed to be chatting, but she wasn't responding. Then Quark touched Kira's face. Dax moved her chair for a better view and wondered when Kira would floor the Ferengi. She didn't react until Quark touched her breast, her movements uncoordinated and off-balance. Dax got up.

"Now I know you're not feeling like yourself, Major-" Dax heard Quark saying just before Kira grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and brought her knee up hard into the shorter Ferengi's crotch. He froze, his mouth forming a silent 'o' of indescribable pain. Kira released him, threw her arms out and swung them in, slamming into Quark's enormous and highly sensitive ears.

"Uah!" Quark started to bend forward. Kira put her hands under his chin and pushed up and away from her. Quark crashed at Dax's feet as Kira stumbled away toward the main entrance.

"Kira!" Dax yelled before she knelt beside Quark. A steadily increasing wailing rose from the wounded Ferengi, but otherwise, he was obviously going to live.

"Serves you right." Dax left him to follow Kira. She ran into Odo as he was coming in, the security chief looking for the source of the howl of pain that Quark was making.

"What's going on?" the shapeshifter asked.

"Quark tried to grope Kira," Dax explained as she scanned the crowd on the Promenade for an orange uniform.

"And?"

"She kneed him in the groin."

"And?"

"Then she boxed his ears."

"Hurph! Serves him right," Odo declared in his gravely voice, his smooth unfinished features expressing disdain with the subtlest of motions.

Dax spotted Kira by the tailor shop. Odo followed. The Bajoran was huddled next to the gray wall, her head bowed so that all Dax could see was her short, straight hair like a dark auburn skull cap. Dax couldn't imagine what Quark could have said that would have affected Kira so strongly.

"Kira?"

Kira-Kira-Kira-Kirakirakirakira.

The echo rose and fell and she covered her ears. It wasn't too loud. It was too _strange_. She didn't just hear it, she could _feel_ the sound all around her body. The same thing happened when she looked at anything. The Promenade had changed to a jumble of invading color and pattern. Nothing made sense. What had happened to the space station?

Something pressed against her and she turned, her body moving in slow motion to push it away. Her muscles were sluggish and weighted and she felt as if her body was being transformed by the weird metamorphosis that had claimed her world.

I'llgetDoctorBashir.

Odo. He was a shapeshifter; if anyone could survive in this kind of chaos, it would be Odo. Kira scanned the maelstrom of shapes around her for him. She glimpsed a shadow of the right shade of tan but then it shrank, swallowed up in black and blue.

What had gone wrong? Had the station fallen into the wormhole? Slipped into a dimension where all reality didn't mean anything anymore? She made herself smaller, hoping that it would slow down the transformations she could feel building within her.

Dax crouched before Kira who cowered next to the wall. They were drawing a crowd of curious shoppers and idle ship crew members on leave. Several Bajoran station crew joined the multi-species gawkers, whispering amongst themselves about their superior's odd behavior. Dax ignored them and concentrated on calming her friend until the doctor arrived.

"Kira? It's okay. It's Dax." The major trembled, her eyes pointing toward the sound. She could smell the synthehol that dampened the cuffs of her uniform and it spotted her usually trim uniform.

"D-Dax?"

"Yes," she answered, encouraged by the recognition. "It's all right. Odo's gone to get Julian."

"Odo? Where's Odo?"

"He's gone to get Doctor Bashir. He'll be right back." Dax's scientist's mind went through the possible causes of Kira's condition. It certainly wasn't the synthehol and Dax had certainly not heard of any disease that would cause such a sudden psychosis, at least none that didn't show any earlier symptoms. And the Starfleet officer had been with Kira all afternoon in Ops, and she hadn't displayed any type of illness at all. Nor did Kira have any medical condition that Dax knew of that would cause this kind of change.

That left an external source being the probable cause. The crowd around them was growing, but none of them showed any signs of instability, just morbid curiosity; it appeared that Kira was the only person affected. Dax could hear Quark's receding howls of pain as somebody, probably Rom, took him to the Infirmary.

"All right, the show's over. I'm sure you all have other things to do." Odo's rough voice disbanded the bulk of the gathering and they broke up and wandered off.

"What happened?" Doctor Bashir laid his medical kit down on the floor next to Dax. Kira, curled up next to wall. She responded to the new presence, but her fearful eyes never focused on the doctor or Odo standing behind him.

"She attacked Quark-"

"I heard about that," the youthful doctor stated, nodding in the direction of Quark's yowls of pain.

"-and then she came out here."

"Did she look ill at all before?" Bashir held his medical scanner up to Kira with one hand and checked the readings on the tricorder he held in the other. The two Starfleet officers crouched together before the Bajoran.

"No, but when she came into the bar, she picked up a drink that Quark had poured, and I don't think he meant it for her."

"Really? I wonder what Quark will have to say about that?" Odo speculated in a predatory fashion, seeing an opportunity to undermine the Ferengi.

"It might help if you could see if you could find that drink," Bashir told him impatiently.

"Right." Odo nodded and left.

"Kira? Kira, can you understand me?" Bashir carefully moved a little closer. Kira started and he backed off.

"Kira, do you know who this is."

"B-Bashir, D-D-Doctor Bashir," she stammered back, her gaze still unfocused.

"Good. That's good." Bashir slid forward again until he was next to her against the wall. This time she didn't jump, but she edged a few centimeters away from him. He put his tricorder and scanner away, closed up the medical kit and put its strap over his shoulder. Dax slid forward as well, coming in on Kira's other side. "There's something wrong with you-"

"You're telling me," she answered back nervously. She hunched over her knees, encircling them with her arms.

"I want to take you to the Infirmary." He touched her arm and she flinched.

"No, no, I-I don't want to go there." She shook her head and covered her short, fluffed hair with her hands as if the roof were coming down on her.

"It's all right, It's all right," Bashir reassured her gently.

"Kira," Dax spoke softly, on her other side. She laid her hand on Kira's shoulder, a feather touch at first and then when she didn't object, Dax slid her hand behind her back. "You're not well. We really need to take you to the Infirmary."

"Through that?" Dax and Bashir followed her fearful gaze to the moderately busy Promenade. Except for a few lingering curiosity-seekers that one of Odo's tan uniformed security people shooed away, the collection of humanoids cluttering Deep Space Nine's main thoroughfare paid no attention to them.

"Can't you give her something, Julian?" Dax suggested.

"I'd rather not, at least not until I know what she's already had." He leaned close to Kira again.

"It's all right," Bashir repeated as he carefully slid a hand behind her back, his other hand coming under her elbow. "We'll help you." He nodded to Dax and they both got up, taking Kira with them, her legs uncurling under her as she stood. They started forward, but she resisted.

"No-no. This is _not_ going to work." Kira pulled weakly against them. Dax and Bashir were about the same height, and both taller and broader than Kira; they gently held her in place between them.

"Yes it is," Bashir murmured into her ear. "Close your eyes, don't look. We'll help you." Kira, almost panting, tensed to flee, squeezed her eyes shut.

"That's good," Bashir encouraged her after her first trepidant steps. "You're doing beautifully. It's just a little ways." Slowly, the three of them crossed the Promenade to the open Infirmary between the shops, Odo's security people cleared the way for them.

Odo greeted them at the door.

"I found the drink that Kira got," the shapeshifter reported in his gruff voice. "And I convinced Quark to tell me what happened. Apparently he agreed to delay the captain of the _Vrazao_ for a business deal by doctoring his drink, and Kira got it by mistake." Bashir's assistant, a blond Starfleet technician named Suzy Bylin, had Quark on one examination table, and was trying to scan the embarrassed and pained Ferengi's lower regions.

"Well, what was in it?" Bashir demanded and he and Dax crept toward an empty examination table with Kira.

"Czistirine. The captain of the _Vrazao_ is Tellurian."

"Wonderful." The blood chemistry for the Tellurians and Bajorans was completely different.

**

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- - - End Part 1**


	2. Chapter 2

**DON'T KILL ME, I'M ONLY THE BARTENDER**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 2**

The voices crowded in on Kira. Bashir and Dax were huge around her, smothering her in the heated darkness. She stayed hidden between them in spite of the discomfort, sweat clinging to her skin, chafing under her clothes. They clearly knew what was going on. Whatever had happened to the station didn't seem to affect Starfleet officers.

KiraIwantyoutogetuponthetable.

"What?" Bashir wanted something from her. After passing through layers and layers of sound, they'd arrived somewhere. She felt something press into her middle and she opened her eyes.

The room they were in was huge, cavernous, colored lights winking in the distance. Cool, bright air washed over her, prickling her sweaty skin through her uniform. She was suddenly very, very small and she was being lifted. She grabbed for support and rolled onto a flat surface, curling up to absorb the impact. Bashir tried to press her into the mat she lay on, but she curled up even tighter, getting even smaller, fearing that she would fly apart if she didn't. Bashir didn't mean any harm, but he didn't always know what he was doing. His voice and Dax's floated high above her. It really wasn't fair that she should have to endure this, just because she was wearing the wrong uniform. The wind around her grew colder and she shivered.

The gray walls in the distance hummed and squealed at her. The lights gibbered, diving in on her and back when she batted them away. Dax and Bashir were keeping it back somehow, probably because they were so large. Bashir would touch her occasionally, his enormous hand almost covering her entire body.

Bashir poked her. Then he poked her again. She shuddered. What was he doing?

She looked about and found herself surrounded by hard lines and bright lights. The jumble of sight and sound settled into the Infirmary on the DS9 Promenade.

"Major?" Bashir stood over her, his boyish features framed by his curly, dark hair. It was hazy at the edges and Kira wondered why Bashir had stopped to change his hair. He wasn't that vain, was he? "How are you feeling?"

She cautiously uncurled her legs, which she noted were whole. She was still cold, but the chill wind had died down and she could feel the temperature rising again. There was something wrong with the lighting of the room; everything looked bluish-purple. The corners of the room were fuzzy and she wondered how long this pocket of stability would last.

"Major?" She looked up at Bashir again.

"Um, ah, better than I was. What happened?" He touched her forehead, gently pressing her head down onto the pillow under it. His palm was very warm and soft and normal sized again. The room felt noticeably warmer, comfortably so.

"We think you got the wrong drink at Quark's place." Kira tried to remember when that could have happened. How could she have stopped at Quark's in all that chaos going on outside? Did she have some kind of amnesia? She started to ask, but her question was stifled by a yawn. She tried to get up, but Bashir stopped her.

"Major, I want you to rest now. I've given you something to help you sleep until this wears off-"

"What?" She tried to rise again and he pushed her back down easily. It felt to her like he was hardly using any effort at all. "I can't just go to sleep now. Now with all that going on." He didn't even look to the hazy portions of the room and horrified, she realized that he didn't seem to know that they were even there.

"Hey, it's all right. Nothing's going to happen to you while you're asleep. Someone will be nearby all the time. And you really do need the rest. That's an order, Major." He looked down at her with his wide-eyed attempt at serious authority. She knew that she should have been able to just brush him off, but her body wouldn't obey.

"You can't give me orders," she mumbled, her eyes half closed.

"Well, I may only be a Starfleet doctor." He loomed over her, his hand still warm on her forehead and she shut her eyes. "But I'm still a doctor."

"Ummmm." She could hear her own breathing, steady and loud in her ears, like an involuntary snore. Bashir's touch and his shadow on her eyelids left her.

"What about me?" Kira heard the new voice and rolled her head

toward it. "I don't see why she should get all the attention. _I'm_ the one who's hurt," it grumbled. Kira pried her eyes open enough to see where this familiar sound was coming from.

Jadzia Dax and Odo met Commander Sisko at the door to the Infirmary where they filled him in on what had happened. Bashir came over to them from the treatment area.

"Doctor, how's Major Kira?" Sisko's usual low and serious voice accenting his concern for his second in command.

He sighed. "Well, the good news is that she won't suffer any permanent injury. As it turns out, czistirine is a rather powerful hallucinogen for Bajorans."

"A hallucinogen." Dax repeated.

"Yes. The bad news is that there isn't a direct anti-toxin for it. I can reduce the symptoms with neural blockers, but otherwise it has to wear off."

"How long?" Sisko asked.

"At least ten hours. I've given her a sedative, so she can sleep the rest of it off."

"Dr. Bashir!" The panicked cry came from Qaurk at the other end of the room.

"Oh, not now Quark," Bashir complained.

"Dr. Bashir-augh!" The strangling sound got their attention and they turned to look.

Major Kira had gotten up, crossed the far end of the room and was standing over the examination table that Quark lay on, her hands around his throat.

Bashir and Odo reached her at the same time and pulled her away from the other patient. Her grip was weak, her hands coming away easily from Quark's neck. But even though she couldn't have been exerting much pressure on him, her intended victim stared at her with wide-eye, speechless dread. She stood swaying between Bashir and Odo, her head lolling from side to side.

"I don't understand this," Bashir said, astonished. "She's got enough torugin in her to keep her out for almost twelve hours."

"She doesn't look like she's exactly awake," Odo noted and then turned to Quark. "I can't say I disapprove of her reflexes."

"She-she's dangerous! You've got to put her under restraints! She might have killed me!"

"Poetic justice, perhaps?" Sisko commented with an amused smile.

"You didn't see what she did to me in the bar. I could be maimed for life!" Quark declared.

"Yes, it's a shame I missed it," Odo told him.

"You can expect to make a full recovery," Bashir declared over his shoulder and then returned his attention to Kira. "Well, we'd better take her into the other room. So she won't be tempted," he said back to the Ferengi. They started to go, but Odo paused, turning Kira toward Quark.

"Just remember, Quark, just in case you get any other ideas; even sedated, she's far more than you're able to handle."

The Ferengi gulped in the face of Kira's malevolent, glassy-eyed stare. She stared to half-fall, half-lurch in his direction and he cowered away from her. Bashir and Odo caught her and hustled her away, Dax and Sisko following.

The group entered the Infirmary's isolation room. They steered Kira toward the bed and sat her down on it. Bashir knelt, passing his medical scanner before her.

"I still don't understand this," he declared, incredulous. His patient sat limply upright, her determined blank stare challenging all his training and limited experience. Her lower lip protruded.

"I think you're underestimating Major Kira, Doctor," Sisko told him, his dark features approving of Kira's blatant and unconscious defiance of medical common sense. "I take it you can handle things from here?"

"Uh, yes. I think I can keep her from killing Quark at least. If Dax would stay and help me get her into bed." Odo took the hint and left with Sisko. Bashir's scanner disappeared and he started tugging one of Kira's boots off. Dax sat down next to her and unhooked her belt.

"It doesn't make any sense," Bashir complained. "She should be completely out, not sitting here staring at us like a zombie." He tossed aside her second boot and peeled off her brown, fuzzy socks, his nose wrinkling in distaste with the aroma of sweaty Bajoran feet.

"You're underestimating the individual spirit, Julian. It can be very powerful, especially when given the right motivation." Dax slid Kira's jacket from her shoulders, pulling it down off her limp arms. Kira rocked from side to side with the motion, threatening to tip over. Dax steadied her and Kira's arm flopped around her waist catching the ends of the Trill's long, dark hair. With Kira's forehead on her collarbone, Dax patted her trailing ponytail back into place before untucking the major's shirt from her pants.

"Hrumph." Bashir got up and went to a wall cupboard. "Well, I learned in medical school that the individual spirit still has to bow to medical science." He took out an Infirmary gown and a blanket. "And medical science says that she shouldn't be able to move."

"Oa-ah-um-mmmph," Kira muttered through the folds of shirt and undershirt that Dax was pulling up over her head.

"I don't think Kira agrees with you," Dax told him as he returned. He handed her the sleeveless gown and working together they got Kira into it.

The efforts of her companions finally wore out the major's reserves and, her eyes closing, she fell back onto the bed.

"Finally!" Bashir declared after he'd checked her vital signs and confirmed that was really and truly out. He loosened her pants under the gown and he and Dax pulled them off along with the rest of her undergarments. Then they arranged Kira's limp body on the bed and covered her with the blanket. Bashir checked the monitors over her head, which was turned slightly so she wasn't lying on her earring. The earring carried significant philosophical and religious meaning for Bajorans and neither of the two Starfleet officers wanted to touch it if they didn't have to.

Dax watched Bashir as he set the motion sensors on the monitors so that the medical computer would notify him immediately if Kira got up. Dax smiled to herself as he methodically double-checked the readings on Kira's breathing, heartrate and bloodpressure, the blue and yellow lights from the instruments illuminating his young face. It was getting late and he needed a shave.

Over the past few weeks Dax had seen him romancing several different woman, and it had taken her months of calm and patient refusals to finally get him off her own back. Yet he'd just stripped and dressed Kira without a single comment. Dax doubted that Doctor Bashir had even thought of any, the division between his professional career and personal rakishness seemed so absolute. Dax went to collect Kira's discarded clothes and boots.

"Well, maybe you should write a paper about this one, Julian."

"Hmm." He considered this as he got up from the bed and went to the door where he lowered the room lights. "You know a paper might prove interesting. After all, if my patients are going to display unnatural stamina like this, I might as well document it."

"Just remember one thing, Julian," Dax said to him as they left, her head tilted toward the unconscious form in the dimly lit room behind them.

"What's that?" he asked as he closed the door.

"Don't turn your back on her."

The next morning Lieutenant Dax breezed into the Infirmary carrying with her a bundle of freshly laundered orange uniform wrapped around a wad of underclothes and boots. She found Bashir at his desk computer.

"How's Kira?"

He flicked off his terminal and turned to her. "She's still asleep, but I was just going to go wake her. Care to join me?" Dax accepted.

"You know Quark's already been here this morning. You'd think he had something terminal the way he's going on about it." He stood and they went to the isolation room.

"I saw him at the bar before I came here. The way he's telling it, all Bajoran women are temperamental and unstable. He's threatening to sue the Bajoran government for 'pain and suffering'."

"Hmph, I don't suppose he mentioned the czistirine in all that?"

"No, that detail seems to have slipped his mind. Maybe you should remind him about it. He said he was going to get a full medical report from you as evidence for his case."

"Count on it." They stopped at the door to the isolation room. "Though mind you, Kira did do some serious damage. She crushed some of the cartilage in Quark's ears and his whole groin area was swollen purple from the bruises. It must have been excruciating..." his voice trailed off from his sympathetic description of an exclusively male injury as he shyly acknowledged Dax.

"My last host was a male, Julian. Trust me, I know exactly what it feels like," Dax reassured him. She opened the door and Bashir nodded appreciatively wide-eyed behind her back. They entered the room.

Kira lay sprawled on the bed, the blanket disarranged, her arms up on the pillow next to her head, her normally tidy hair lying flat in some places, sticking out in odd ways in others.

Bashir sat down on the bed next to her. "Kira?" He cupped her chin and gently shook her head. "Time to wake up."

Kira reluctantly opened her eyes; they felt like they were crusted shut and she squinted at the hazy light and dark above her formed into Julian Bashir. She groaned, thinking that no one should be allowed to look so cheerful and fresh-faced in the morning. She rolled her head toward where the star-filled window of her quarters should have been. It wasn't there. There wasn't any window at all. She was lying in a closed gray cell.

"What happened?" She started to rise. The room spun around her and she fell back.

"How are you feeling?" Kira heard Bashir's medical scanner hum.

"How am I supposed to feel?" She grimaced back at him. Her lower back was sore and there were stabbing pains in her hips.

"Well." Bashir lowered the scanner. "Not very good I'm afraid."

"What happened?" she repeated.

"Apparently," Dax appeared from behind Bashir and strolled around to the other side of the bed. "You got the wrong drink at Quark's last night."

"Quark's," Kira whispered. She struggled to sit up. "That worthless Ferengi, he put something in my drink!" Bashir steadier her when a wave of dizziness blotted out her vision and balance. Dax sat down next to her and rocking the bed.

"It wasn't meant for you, Kira," Dax reassured, laying her hand on Kira's shoulder.

"Oh yeah?" Kira pressed her fingers to her temples. A stabbing pain had appeared behind her eyes and it was spreading. "You could've fooled me after what he tried." The previous night was a confusing jumble, but Kira distinctly remembered Quark coming at her, laying his hands on her.

"It was part of a business deal that Quark had set up. You got the drink by mistake," Dax repeated. Bashir pulled on her wrist and she batted him away like an insect. He surprised her by seizing her arm and her chin.

"Sit still," he ordered. He held something up to her temple. Kira felt a humming in her skull. The pain receded and she closed her eyes and let Bashir continue.

"If you ask me, Major," he told her as he worked. "You shouldn't go picking up strange drinks in bars without knowing what they are. That's the first thing they teach you at Starfleet Academy."

"I know what Quark serves at his bar, Doctor. I don't need any etiquette lessons," she spat back. Bashir moved to her other temple, the end of his instrument making the bone there gently vibrate. The emerging headache faded away completely. He released her chin and her head dropped. Her eyes opened and she felt a nerve in her neck twinge as she pulled her head back up too far and too quickly. Bashir's hand caught her; his fingers started massaging her neck in exactly the right spot. She felt the vertebrae satisfyingly crack. She opened her mouth wide and her ears popped.

"Is that better?" he asked and she nodded before getting back to her anger.

"Where's Quark?" she demanded.

"In the bar last I looked," Dax responded. Kira started to get up, and then looked down at the knee length gown and blanket bunched around her.

"Where are my clothes?" Dax pointed her toward the bundle she'd brought with her and Kira made a grab for it. Bashir stopped her.

"Kira, it was an accident. Quark didn't mean to give you that drink," he insisted.

"He'll have to prove that to me."

"He shouldn't have to prove anything. Odo's already confirmed that it was an accident."

"Why are you taking Quark's side?" The Bajoran glared back at him.

"Because anything you break, I have to put back together." Bashir pointed at himself.

"You won't be able to put back together what's left of Quark after I'm through with him." Kira thrust aside the blanket, seized the bundle of clothes on the bed and muscled her way past Dax. She stiffly stormed toward the lavatory, carrying her clothes. Bashir got in her way.

"Look, before you start taking Quark apart, I at least want you to go to the Replimat with Dax after you're finished getting dressed and get something to eat."

"Get out of my way, Doctor," Kira warned. Bashir sighed and stepped aside. The lavatory door slid shut behind her.

Dax shrugged.

"Well, at she's feeling better," she commented with a pleasant smile.

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- - - End Part 2**


	3. Chapter 3

**DON'T KILL ME, I'M ONLY THE BARTENDER**

by ardavenport

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- - - Part 3**

Two days later, Dax spotted Kira sitting still and by herself at a small table in Quark's bar. The Trill went over to her friend. Kira had been tight-lipped about the whole czistirine incident and she, Sisko and everyone else at Ops hadn't pressed her about it. And as far as Dax had heard, Kira's revenge against Quark had as yet gone unrequited.

"Kira?" Dax slid into the seat next to the Bajoran at the tiny table. Kira didn't respond, she just sat staring down at a full and untouched drink. "Are you all right? Is anything wrong?"

"Not yet." Kira answered without looking back at the Lieutenant. Puzzled, Dax looked around for a clue to what Kira was talking about. The table they were at was in a particularly busy part of the bar, next to the steps that led to the upper level where the dabo games were. Wealthy traders of every species, Bajorans, broke customers and glittering, loosely clad dabo girls passed by Kira's table. In fact, all the traffic going to and from the gambling area of the bar had to pass by Kira's table.

"You're waiting for Quark aren't you?" Dax concluded.

"He's been avoiding me for two days, now. But he's got to walk by here sometime." The gambling was the most profitable part of the bar's business and Quark normally couldn't resist going up there every few hours to check on things and see how much he was making from it. Normally that is when Kira wasn't lying in wait for him, Dax amended to herself.

"Kira, Quark's been hiding out for two days. He doesn't look like he's slept in all that time worrying about what you're going to do to him."

"He's not sleeping in his quarters, at least," Kira amended ominously.

"What I'm saying," Dax plowed on. "Is that Quark is so terrorized by just the thought of what you might do to him that the anticipation alone should serve as enough punishment for what he did." Kira calmly started stirring the brown liquid in the glass in front of her with the golden straw protruding from the drink. If there had ever been any ice in it, it had long since melted.

"Kira, what good is taking revenge on Quark going to do? It's not going to make you feel better about what happened."

"Wanna bet?"

Dax reconsidered that argument. "Kira, maybe if you waited a little longer before talking to him, let things cool off between you-"

"Lieutenant." Kira stopped stirring her drink, but she didn't look up as she addressed Dax by her Starfleet rank. "I understand your efforts to...keep the peace. But they aren't appreciated. Whatever is between Quark and me is personal."

Dax sat quietly a moment, hoping that her friend might amend her cold and formal rejection. Kira didn't budge and Dax, resigned to the inevitable, pushed her chair back from the table and left.

Forty minutes later Odo, making his usual rounds of the area, noticed Kira alone at her table.

"Major." he nodded

"Constable." she answered back to the full glass in front of her.

Odo looked at her carefully, then he surveyed the area.

"Looking for someone, Major?" he asked as he scanned the room for a particular Ferengi profile.

"He can run, but he can't hide," Kira vowed, quoting an Earth saying she'd heard from Chief O'Brien.

Odo straightened.

"Just try to remember, Major, that murder is still illegal here."

"I'll try my best, Constable."

Another hour went by. Rom scuttled by Kira's table, his terrified eyes never leaving the major. She didn't react to him at all. A minute later Rom hurried by again in the other direction, practically running back to the bar once he'd cleared the area immediately around Kira.

Another twenty minutes went by before Quark edged into Kira's peripheral vision, Rom fretting behind him. The Ferengi appeared to gird what little courage he had and approached her table.

"Major." Quark stood at Kira's side, just out of arm's reach. "I understand you've been looking for me." No answer. Kira didn't even look up. "And I have to say that I don't appreciate being harassed like this." Still no response and Quark's nerve started to weaken. "I shall have to complain to Commander Sisko about your behavior towards me."

Quark looked down at the Bajoran's short, auburn hair, her eerie silence totally unexpected and unsettling. What was wrong with her?

The glass in front of Kira was full, but already Quark's imagined the worst. Perhaps a delayed reaction from the czistirine? Had Bashir missed something? If Kira suffered some kind of relapse she would be twice as angry with him and so her revenge on him would be ten times more horrible. Quark gulped. The odds in the station betting pool were weighted heavily in favor of Quark suffering at least one more serious injury at Kira's hands before the major's grudge against him was settled. Quark knew. He was the bookie. And unless Kira managed to inflict every possible injury on the betting list, or killed him, he stood to make a bundle on the deal.

He edged a little closer, lowering his head, looking this way and that, trying to get a better look at her face. Her blank stare was ominously familiar. But if she wanted to set a trap for him, wouldn't this be the perfect lure to get him within striking distance?

"Uh, that drink looks like it needs freshening." The Ferengi snatched up the glass and jumped back again. Kira stayed motionless. A substantial block of people had bet that Kira would force a czistirine-laced drink down his throat. He deposited the drink on a nearby table.

Quark wiped his palm off on the front of his shirt, his eyes returning to the major. He moved closer again and extended a nervous finger toward her.

"Major-?"

Kira struck.

Like a viper, she seized him, grabbing his shirt and thrusting him down hard against the table, bending him backwards, the edge of the table cutting into Quark's lower back.

"Major!" Quark's tone rose half an octave. "You-you've been waiting for me all this time? You shouldn't have." Quark's hands were free, but he just waved them around trying to think of a way to mollify the major. Her teeth were bared, something that Quark knew that Bajorans and similar humanoids did only when they were extremely angry, or homicidal. Her eyes were positively bulging with fury, the Bajoran ridges between them and the skin around them scrunched up with rage.

"You've been avoiding me, Quark," she hissed.

"Who me? No-no-no-no, surely you're mistaken, Major. I know I've been terribly busy lately, maybe you just missed-"

Kira's hand caught his throat, her long fingernails biting into the soft flesh like talons.

"Don't lie to me, Quark!" Kira's hand closed on his windpipe. The room around them had fallen silent, even the electronic spin of the dabo wheels was ominously still. The gambling stakes had climbed considerably past those of a pleasure game. Ear damage, strangulation and another knee in the groin were high on the list of most likely possibilities. Death had the longest odds in the betting pool; 3000 to 1. So if Kira-either by accident or design-killed him, Quark knew that the debts from paying off on his death would bankrupt his brother Rom.

"Lie?" Quark gasped when Kira's grip slackened enough for him to get some air. "I wouldn't do that to you, Maj-ack!" Kira seized him by the ears, like a pair of handles and hauled him off the table. She dragged him to the bar, Quark stumbling along with her, his mouth open and speechless with agony. Her thumbs were digging right into a tender spot between the cartilages. Rom stood paralyzed with fear and watched along with most of the patrons in the spacious bar. Even people at the tables on the upper levels were looking down at the show. The ones who had bet on choking and ear damage were already counting the winnings that they planned to collect from Quark when Kira was done with him.

"No, you wouldn't lie, you wouldn't cheat, you wouldn't put anything in someone's drink, would you?" Kira said sarcastically as she swung Qaurk in between two bar stools. She released his ears and grabbed a handful of shirt again. His back was to the counter of the bar.

"It was an accident, Major! It was an accident!" Quark pleaded in a desperate falsetto.

"I don't care if it was an accident!" she shouted back at him. "I'm tired of your scheming; I'm tired of your cheating; I'm tired of your petty, greedy little tricks!"

"Is-is that all?"

Kira slammed him back against the bar.

"Major, please! At least let me try to make it up to you!" Quark's fear of Major Kira was rapidly being replaced by anxiety for his shrinking betting pool profits. The more damage Kira did to him, the more money he would have to pay out. Subconsciously, Quark also feared suffering further physical injuries, but his first instincts went always to his business. "I won't charge you for that last drink; it's the least I can do."

"What?" Enraged, Kira forced the Ferengi further back against the bar.

"Augh!" The pressure on his back where he was bent backwards over the bar tripled. Quark could feel pins and needles in his legs and his feet weren't touching the floor anymore. "I'll cancel your bar tab!" he exclaimed against his better judgement, the pain finally making some headway against his profit margin.

"Do you think you can just buy me off, Quark?" Kira's bony arms jabbed into his sternum.

"Well, at least let me try! How about a free drink? Right now. Rom!" Quark's desperation had risen to the point where he was actually calling to his half-wit brother for help. Rom stood frozen in place, watching. "Rom!"

Rom, his jagged teeth bared with anguish for his bother's predicament (wouldn't that dullard ever learn to think for himself? Quark wondered), ran to them, grabbed a bottle and a poured amber ale into a clean glass on the bar. His hand shaking, he slid it toward Kira like an offering to an angry demon. Her grip on Quark not slacking, Kira stared at it. Hurriedly, Rom added a fresh napkin and a garnish.

"I don't believe this," Kira said with disgust. "There just isn't any way to get through to you, is there? Everything's for sale to you, isn't it? Everyone!" She released him, jolting him, his feet contacting the floor again.

"Well you're not buying me." She leaned close enough so she could smell his Ferengi sweat under the cheap cologne he usually wore. His round, shadowed eyes wide, Quark listened. "If you ever cross me like that again, Quark, it won't be so easy for Doctor Bashir to repair the damage." Kira stepped back, picked up Rom's drink and threw it in Quark's face. She hurtled the glass away and it shattered.

Quark didn't let his breath out until after Kira had stormed out of the bar. The noise in the room had already returned to its usual level, the dabo games spinning in the background. He took out a hand cloth from his pocket and wiped the ale off his face. Rom fretted nearby. Mentally subtracting the cost of the broken glass from his brother's share of the bar's profits, Quark hissed at him and sent him scurrying. That hadn't been so bad after all, he told himself with his usual inflated confidence.

"Quite a show."

Quark whirled to find Odo standing behind the bar.

"What are you doing there?"

"Just watching your little scene with Kira." Quark leaned against the bar and rubbed his neck. Odo could have been anywhere. In the shape of a chair, or a bottle or a tray; nobody would have seen him. "You know you could have saved yourself a lot of anguish if you'd done this two days ago."

"There's no point doing what you might be able to put off indefinitely."

"Do you really think you could have put off Major Kira?'

"I wasn't doing such a bad job of it," Quark defended.

"Until she cornered you." Odo's bland, smooth features barely smiled, but to the Ferengi it was a smug smirk.

"Do you have business here, Constable?" Quark strode around the bar to where Odo was. "Because if you don't, I shall have to ask you to move. Only employees are permitted back here."

Odo tilted his head, his near-smile still in place. He produced a data chit. "I just wanted to deliver this." Quark took it and turned it over, but there were no markings to indicate what was on it.

"What's this?" he asked when they were both on their proper sides of the bar.

"It's a fine," Odo announced. Quark's mouth dropped open. "For one rather substantial violation of your service contract with the Bajoran government: for serving an unlawful and toxic substance to a Bajoran."

"Y-you can't do that!" Quark protested. "I'll fight it. I'll contest the charge!"

"Oh, I'm sure you can file an appeal, but I believe that by the terms of your contract you're obliged to front the money for the fine while your appeal is considered."

"You know that once those Bajoran get their hands on my money I'll never see it again."

"Funny, I've heard an awful lot of people say the same thing about you. Oh, you shouldn't have any problem paying it, Quark. Your winnings from the betting pool on Kira should just about cover it."

"How do you know about that?" The shapeshifter merely tilted his head and Quark hissed at his own personal nemesis. Kira's animosity could come and go, but Odo would always be there, lurking and listening. "You're doing this deliberately. To get back at me for what happened to Major Kira."

"Let's just say that I object to seeing you make a profit at Major Kira's expense," Odo warned in his gravelly voice.

"Her expense?" Quark mouthed the words while feeling a sore and abused ear lobe.

The constable stepped away from the bar. Other customers were waiting for Quark's attention, including two blue-skinned ship loaders who had bet heavily on Kira trying to strangle him. Quark grumbled to himself, watching the back of Odo's tan uniform leave through the exit and making sure that Odo didn't melt into a piece of spying furniture. Quark turned back and saw Rom paying out pool bets without even quibbling about the quality of the win. With his sore neck and back and ears, Quark hurried over to protect his profit.

**** ** ** ** ** END ** ** ** ** ****

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Note:** This story was written by me and first printed (under the name 'Anne Davenport') in 1994, in _Outpost_ 2, a fanzine back in the hard-copy and snail-mail days of fan-fiction, before the internet really took off.

**Disclaimer:** All Trek characters and the universe belong to Paramount; I'm just playing in that sandbox.


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